Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

the following sophism: —

“Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen, as he is charged with

high treason, and arrested.

“I, on the contrary, am a good citizen, as I am not charged

with anything in the world, as I am as free as the air of

heaven.”

“If, therefore, Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen, — of

which there can be no doubt, as he is charged with high

treason, and arrested, — his accomplice, Cornelius van

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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

Baerle, is no less a bad citizen than himself.

“And, as I am a good citizen, and as it is the duty of every

good citizen to inform against the bad ones, it is my duty

to inform against Cornelius van Baerle.”

Specious as this mode of reasoning might sound, it would not

perhaps have taken so complete a hold of Boxtel, nor would

he perhaps have yielded to the mere desire of vengeance

which was gnawing at his heart, had not the demon of envy

been joined with that of cupidity.

Boxtel was quite aware of the progress which Van Baerle had

made towards producing the grand black tulip.

Dr. Cornelius, notwithstanding all his modesty, had not been

able to hide from his most intimate friends that he was all

but certain to win, in the year of grace 1673, the prize of

a hundred thousand guilders offered by the Horticultural

Society of Haarlem.

It was just this certainty of Cornelius van Baerle that

caused the fever which raged in the heart of Isaac Boxtel.

If Cornelius should be arrested there would necessarily be a

great upset in his house, and during the night after his

arrest no one would think of keeping watch over the tulips

in his garden.

Now in that night Boxtel would climb over the wall and, as

he knew the position of the bulb which was to produce the

grand black tulip, he would filch it; and instead of

flowering for Cornelius, it would flower for him, Isaac; he

also, instead of Van Baerle, would have the prize of a

hundred thousand guilders, not to speak of the sublime

honour of calling the new flower Tulipa nigra Boxtellensis,

— a result which would satisfy not only his vengeance, but

also his cupidity and his ambition.

Awake, he thought of nothing but the grand black tulip;

asleep, he dreamed of it.

At last, on the 19th of August, about two o’clock in the

afternoon, the temptation grew so strong, that Mynheer Isaac

was no longer able to resist it.

Accordingly, he wrote an anonymous information, the minute

exactness of which made up for its want of authenticity, and

posted his letter.

Never did a venomous paper, slipped into the jaws of the

bronze lions at Venice, produce a more prompt and terrible

effect.

On the same evening the letter reached the principal

magistrate, who without a moment’s delay convoked his

colleagues early for the next morning. On the following

morning, therefore, they assembled, and decided on Van

Baerle’s arrest, placing the order for its execution in the

hands of Master van Spennen, who, as we have seen, performed

his duty like a true Hollander, and who arrested the Doctor

at the very hour when the Orange party at the Hague were

roasting the bleeding shreds of flesh torn from the corpses

of Cornelius and John de Witt.

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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

But, whether from a feeling of shame or from craven

weakness, Isaac Boxtel did not venture that day to point his

telescope either at the garden, or at the laboratory, or at

the dry-room.

He knew too well what was about to happen in the house of

the poor doctor to feel any desire to look into it. He did

not even get up when his only servant — who envied the lot

of the servants of Cornelius just as bitterly as Boxtel did

that of their master — entered his bedroom. He said to the

man, —

“I shall not get up to-day, I am ill.”

About nine o’clock he heard a great noise in the street

which made him tremble, at this moment he was paler than a